


you're sunlight in my bones

by katsumi



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Caretaking, F/M, Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 22:12:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11171124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsumi/pseuds/katsumi
Summary: She lets her shield fall, registering the sharp clatter as it hits the ground, and then there’s Steve: panting and grinning, his body a tight coil of worry and elation. He cups her cheeks with breathless laughter, pressing his forehead against hers.Ares is dead, but one urgent matter remains: how to dispose of the plane of poisonous gas. Diana volunteers, much to Steve's displeasure.





	you're sunlight in my bones

**Author's Note:**

> Based entirely on the Wonder Woman (2017) movie; I'm otherwise unfamiliar with the DCEU.
> 
> The premise here is that Steve didn't explode the plane and Diana was still able to defeat Ares because _reasons_ (aka: I wanted Steve to live shhhhh). The goal was "Steve is alive!" so please forgive any logical fallacies employed to get us to that point.

****Diana doesn’t save the world. But maybe the world isn’t saveable, not in the way she first thought.

For now, Ares is dead, and the plane full of poisonous gas is grounded, and the sun is rising purple-pink on the horizon, the start of a new day. And that’s close enough. 

She lets her shield fall, registering the sharp clatter as it hits the ground, and then there’s Steve: panting and grinning, his body a tight coil of worry and elation. He cups her cheeks with breathless laughter, pressing his forehead against hers. 

“You did it. Diana, you did it, you—you did it!” 

She nods, feeling the creeping strain of the muscles in her neck, her back, her legs. This is far beyond any ache she experienced in training, even with a trainer as unyielding as Antiope. This is bone-deep, a curdling, gnawing exhaustion that rolls over her in waves. 

“You stopped the plane,” she says, because it’s true and remarkable and deserves to be acknowledged. 

Steve’s fingers curl behind her jaw.  

“You killed the God of War.”

She smiles, leaning against him, letting him support (for just a moment) some of her weight.  

“I did.” 

He kisses her temple, fierce and fervent, and then his arms are around her, and the sun is breaking across the treeline, and all around she can see soldiers removing their gas masks and staring up at the sky in wonder. Diana watches them, clutching Steve’s shoulders, and takes a deep, shuddering breath. 

It’s over.

 

* * *

 

Well, mostly over.

The God of War might be dead, but the plane of gas remains, a thorn in all their sides. Steve had managed to keep the plane grounded by surrounding the ground crew and threatening to detonate then and there, thus wiping out the entirety of the base, but the solution was temporary. The evil needed to be destroyed, before man’s weak heart could seek to use it again.

“No,” says Steve, when she tells him her plan, and she smiles. She had anticipated such a response.

“I can do it,” she insists, laying a gentle hand along Steve’s shoulder. His eyebrows are furrowed, jaw tense and tight.

“You can do a lot of things, Diana, but this?” He swallows, glances sideways across the field to where the plane still sits, surrounded by a score of confused soldiers. “I saw what happened to your people in that battle. You may be strong, but you’re not immortal.”

She shrugs. “We do not know that for sure. I was wrong, before. I was not sculpted from clay.”

Steve just blinks at her.

“Zeus is my father,” she continues. “I am—” It’s strange to say the words aloud. “I am born from the Gods.”

Steve just stares at her for a moment before shaking his head, refocusing. “Okay, well, that's a fun new wrinkle. But you just killed a God, so my point about your mortality stands."

“Steve.” She steps closer, tilts her head to try to gauge the expression on his face. “Who else could do it?”

He dips his chin. “I could do it. "

She frowns. “But you would surely die.”

He says nothing, eyes still on his feet, and something cold wraps around Diana’s spine as she realizes what he’s suggesting.

“No. No, Steve, I will do it. Just give me your weapon.”

Steve shakes his head with tired eyes. “I can’t let you do that. The world needs you.”

Diana’s palm slides from Steve’s shoulder to his cheek.

“And I need you,” she says, because it is the truth: one of the only truths she knows in this new, gray world. “I can do it, Steve. I know I can. Let me do it.”

He closes his hand over hers and smiles, shaky. “I don’t really have a choice either way, do I?”

“No,” she murmurs, pinching at the apple of his cheek. “You don’t.”

 

* * *

 

The plan is to power the plane as high into the sky as possible, explode the gas, and then fly back down. This plan comes with a not-insignificant number of obstacles.

The first issue, the one Diana is most immediately concerned with, is that she does not know how to fly a plane.

“But you don’t really need to know how to fly it, do you?” asks Sameer, leaning on his gun. “You just need to know how to get it started, and Steve can explain that. The hardest part’s the landing, and you get to avoid that bit.”

Diana finds this anecdote comforting, but Steve stiffens beside her.

Charlie demonstrates how to use Steve’s gun— _easy, just pull the trigger, nothing to it_ —and Chief talks to her a bit about the wind patterns, trying to hone in on where she might land.

“Should we wait for you here, do you think?” he asks. “Will you be able to navigate your way back to us?”

“I do not know,” she answers, truthfully. “I have never done this before.”

Steve’s hand appears at the small of her back, firm. “Time to go.”

She says goodbye, hugging each new friend in an effort to assuage their visible fears. It’s a thing she’s quite used to by now, to be so much less concerned for her own well-being than for those around her. To be sure of herself in the midst of so much doubt.

Steve is last, waiting for her by the ramp.

“You’ll be fine,” he says, firm. But his words are a lie, Diana knows. The crease of his forehead and strained lines of his shoulders belie his fears. He is not certain that she will be fine at all.

But that is okay. This is the kind of lie Steve tells when he is trying to be good, when he thinks the truth will hurt someone. She recognizes that now, if she does not yet completely understand it.

“It will be alright,” she assures him, taking his hand in hers. He clasps her fingers instantly, tight with nervous energy. His eyes are wide and desperate and perfectly, beautifully blue. 

“Please be safe, Diana.”

She nods. 

“I will be.”

 

* * *

 

She is safe. But safe is a relative term. 

The explosion sends her reeling through the air, the world somersaulting around on itself as a roaring builds in her ears. She plummets, uncontrolled, towards the earth, and she can see Steve’s face behind her closed eyelids: looking up at her that first day on the beach, ocean-soaked and full of awe.

She craters the ground upon impact, splitting the earth until it stops yielding to her weight and she’s lying in a mangled heap at the bottom of a ditch of her own making. Her skin burns hot and white, and she can feel blood pooling at her temple.

The sliver of sky she can see is blue and bright. And even though she’s in pain—worse than anything she’s ever felt before—she can’t help but smile.

 _I did it_ , she thinks. _Steve, I did it._

Her eyes flutter closed.

 

* * *

 

When she wakes, it’s to someone screaming her name.

“DIANA!” 

Her first thought is of her mother, chastising her for getting herself into trouble yet again. But the pitch of this voice is too deep to be her mother’s.

Slowly, she opens her eyes.

Steve is scrambling down the side of the ditch, eyes wild with panic. He falls to his knees at her side, hands trembling above her torso like he wants to touch her, to help her, but doesn’t know how to start.

“Oh god,” he’s mumbling. “Diana, can you hear me? Oh god, Diana—”

She lifts a hand to catch his, to calm the chaos of his terror, and he nearly doubles over with relief.

“Oh, thank god. Diana, are you alright? Are you hurt?”

He leans over her to stroke her hair, and she can see that his eyes are red and wet. He is so good, she thinks with a tired sort of joy. So very, very good.

“Steve—”

“You are hurt,” he gasps. “Shit, of course you are, I—what can I do, Diana? Please, what can I do?”

Slowly, she pushes her creaking shoulders forward off the ground.

“Woah!” Steve tightens his grip on her hand. “What are you doing? Don’t move!”

She ignores him, grimacing as she pulls herself up further until she’s close enough to wrap an arm around Steve’s shoulder. She rests her forehead against his collarbone and takes a breath: he smells of dirt, and sweat, and woods. She loves this smell.

“I am alright,” she murmurs. “I will be alright.”

Steve clutches the back of her head. “I thought you said you were going to fly.”

“I do not know that I can fly.”

“Then why did you say you could?”

“I thought you would worry less if I said fly instead of fall.”

He barks a laugh, clutching her tighter.

“Shit, Diana, you’re going to be the death of me.”

She shakes her head, letting her eyes fall closed.

 _I will not_ , she thinks. _I refuse to be._

 

* * *

 

Steve insists on carrying her out of the trench, which is sweet if impractical: she is capable of walking, even if it sends a searing pain crackling down her spine. Then there’s a great argument as to whether to move her (she might get further hurt) or stay put (they will be vulnerable, remaining close to a site that will surely draw many people curious about what felt from the sky). 

Eventually, Diana has to heave herself to her feet and start limping away before they stop their quarreling and race after her.

“Are we not going back to London?” she asks through clenched teeth as Steve skids to a stop at her side.

“You need to rest.”

“I will this evening, same as you.”

Steve groans, pulling her arm up and around his shoulder.

“Okay, fine, but we’re going to go slow, okay? Can you do slow?”

She sinks into his side with a smile. “Yes. I can do slow.”

She sits behind him on his horse, arms locked around his stomach and cheek resting against his shoulder. It hurts, even at this leisurely pace, but the sun is high, and Charlie is singing, and she can feel the rise and fall of Steve’s chest with his every breath, steady and reassuring.

They make camp early, nestled somewhere deep within the woods. Steve carries her to her tent—again unnecessary, but not unappreciated—and lays her gingerly against the mat.

She expects him to lay down beside her; she is already eager to fall asleep with the weight of him at her back. But he stays seated, moving only to brush a stray lock of hair from her face.

His mouth hardens into a firm line.

“I should have said something to you, before.”

“Before?”

“Before you blew up a plane and fell miles to the earth,” he clarifies. His jaw works. “I should have—there was something I wanted to say, but I couldn’t.”

There’s pain on his face she doesn’t understand. She reaches out for his hand, patting around at the earth until she feels his skin beneath her fingers.

“What did you want to say?” she asks.

Steve’s smile is heavy. “I wanted to say that I love you, Diana.”

Warmth blooms in her chest at those precious, precious words. She wants to savor them, repeat them, curl herself around them, but Steve’s smile has slipped. Something is still wrong.

“Why couldn’t you say it before?” she asks.

“It—well, normally, in this kind of situation, our kind of...situation...it would be, uh. Too soon, I guess.”

She frowns. “Too soon?”

He clears his throat. “Yeah, but uh, nevermind that. It’s more—” He sighs. “I needed to believe you could do it. So I didn’t want to say it for the first time like that, like I was...saying goodbye."

"Love is not a goodbye," she says, confused.

"Okay, but Diana, when you hit the ground? We could _feel_ it, miles away. I thought there was no way you would survive that.”

“But I did!"

His palm is still shaking, his face pulled tight and tense.

“I know. I know, but—I’ve never felt regret like I did in that moment. I should have told you. Hell, I should have been the one to do it instead of you.”

She jerks her neck up, wincing at the pain that slices down her back. But this is important; she needs to be closer.

“No,” she says, grasping for the fabric of his jacket. “There would have been no chance for you.”

He swipes his thumb across the back of her hand, eyes lowered. When he speaks, his voice is soft.

“But you matter so much more than me.”

The first thought that burbles up within her is how untrue that is, how _unfair_ that is. She would not be here if not for him. Ares would still be alive if not for him. She understands, on some level, that there are things she, a daughter of Zeus, can achieve that humans cannot. But to reduce that imbalance to such simplistic terms as who is more worthy of life is not what she wants.

“You matter,” she tells him, as firm as she possibly can. “You matter very much.”

He huffs, a breath of a laugh, and then looks up at her. “I really do love you, you know.”

She smiles. Those words feel no less wonderful the second time.

But Steve seems to misinterpret the silence, because he hurriedly continues: “Unless that’s, um. I don’t mean to...I’m not expecting you to say you love me too, or anything, so don’t—”

Diana furrows her brow; he’s nervous, for some reason. “But I do love you too.”

Steve blinks, caught off guard. “You...do.”

“Yes, of course.”

He grins, fast and bright, then ducks his chin to hide it. When he looks at her again, it’s with a trembling sort of smile, eyebrows raised, like he’s trying to keep as straight a face as possible.

“Well, um. Good, then. That’s good.”

“That’s good?”

“Yeah.” He squeezes her palm. “That’s really good.”

She tugs his hand forward, twisting onto her side to make room for him beside her, and he makes an odd, strangled noise she doesn’t understand.

“Oh. You want me to…”

“We have done this before,” she reminds him, pulling their still-joined hands to her chest. “Please.”

He pauses for a moment, but then lowers down to the mat, settling in behind her. His arm fits snug around her waist, his nose brushing her hair.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I’m just having a hard time remembering this is, well—real.”

“It is.” She leans back against him with a sigh. “Let us sleep, now. I want to be able to ride my own horse in the morning.”

He laughs, pulling her in tighter. “You can’t be serious.”

“I am serious. I think by morning, I will be feeling much better.”

“Wow,” Steve murmurs. “This is going to take some getting used to.”

Diana bites her lip. His tone sounds appreciative, but still: she is born from the gods, and he from man, and they are different, so very, very different.

“Is that bad?” she whispers.

“Not at all.” Steve leans forward to kiss her cheek. “Get some rest, Diana. It’s a long ride tomorrow, and I’m only letting you on your own horse if you prove in the morning you’ve got enough strength to lift it above your head.”

Diana frowns. “The horse will not like that.”

He laughs. “Okay, okay. Sleep well.”

She has a feeling that the world of man—still dark and cruel, even without the God of War’s direct influence—will come to steal many nights’ sleep from her in time. But here on this night, nestled in Steve’s arms, lulled by the weight of his heart beating a steady rhythm against her back, she knows she will sleep peacefully.

A smile on her lips, she lets her eyes fall closed. She is ready.

**Author's Note:**

> Wow I can't stop with them they are too much. I wanted to explore not only a universe in which Steve lives (!!!), but one in which he doesn't face down certain death, and thus doesn't tell Diana he loves her because he knows it's his last chance. Naturally, it comes out anyway, and ughhh these two.
> 
> [leralynne](http://leralynne.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you'd like to come say hi :)


End file.
